Images by Kat Harley //

Misty Lanes will be taking ‘And Here We Are’ on the road in September…

If you’ve been anywhere near a psych show in Sydney in the past five or so years, chances are you’ll have caught Steven Schouten AKA Misty Lanes on stage. Outside of Misty Lanes, he’s spent the past few years playing various instruments for bands – many of whom are LWA favourites – such as Montes Jura, PEEL, and Salarymen. Now, he’s once again behind the wheel of the Misty Lanes spaceship with ‘And Here We Are’.

The tune feels like a melting pot of Schouten’s 60s heroes (The Kinks, 13th Floor Elevators and co.) with his vocals acting as guide through a meandering and lush sonic journey. The guitar tones are impeccable, the groove is hypnotic, and the melodies are tasty – it’s the kind of song you can listen to on repeat for a few hours and not realise.

“I played drums first to get the attitude and swagger I wanted and then took a 30-second loop of me playing and just spent the next few recording sessions trying different guitar and bass grooves over the top until something felt right,” Schouten says. “From there it was just a lot of improvising, re-recording and trying different things. It was a lot of fun to put together; some songs you slave over and they still don’t seem right but this definitely wasn’t one of those and I think that comes across.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yV4_VmHjD0

The video, which was co-directed by Schouten and Kat Harley, sees him double down on his vintage stylings, incorporating old TVs shot at antique shops with footage of him doing his thing. It’s a great fit for the track, and my god, the man can certainly where the hell out of a suit.

“We got most of the way through editing the video and the hard drive we were working off was corrupted and we lost the file. We only had a ‘demo’ export of the video that was nowhere near finished but we were determined to salvage it. I’d been seeing a lot of those old TVs in shop windows and had the idea we could impose the video to make it seem like it was being played in shops almost like an advertisement.”

The track is out now via Third Eye Stimuli and you can catch Misty Lanes live in September at Sydney (15th), Wollongong (16th), Newcastle (17th) and Melbourne (22nd) – tickets here.